This invention relates to software that interfaces to information access platforms.
A search engine is a software program used for search and retrieval in database systems. The search engine often determines the searching capabilities available to a user. A web search engine is often an interactive tool to help people locate information available over the world wide web (WWW). Web search engines are actually databases that contain references to thousands of resources. There are many search engines available on the web, from companies such as Alta Vista, Yahoo, Northern Light and Lycos.
In an aspect, the invention features a method of accessing information including processing a query, searching a collection of data for a set of results matching the query, selectively reducing the set of results to generate a subset of results, outputting a prose rendition of the query and outputting the subset of results. Processing the query includes parsing the query to generate a search fragment and adding context to the search fragment. Context may include extracting data from a web page from which the query was received. Selecting reducing the set include placing the set of results in a hierarchical data structure organized by taxonomy and discarding results positioned at a lowest level of the hierarchical data structure. Outputting a prose rendition includes processing the query in conjunction with rules of grammar and processing the query in conjunction with a prose configuration file.
Embodiments of the invention may have one or more of the following advantages.
Follow-up queries may build from previous query results. Query results are summarized and presented in a fashion designed to fit the user""s displayed web page without losing structure of the results. Thus, through organization and summarization, the overall structure of the result is preserved and provides a value to the user.